Two recent material indulgences of mine include my first living room furniture set purchase and my Orb Audio sound system.

While I've been "out on my own" since I joined the military in late 1998, I had lived in a furnished barracks until about 2006, only to move into an apartment chock full of hand-me-down furniture until getting divorced and moving this October past.

It was not until this past May that I finally got sick of having only a single pleather chair and table for a living room furnishings, and I decided to finance some actual furniture. Finance charges be damned. Come this October, my obligation to pay alimony runs out, and then it's as good as paid off anyway, so I don't feel too bad about financing it.

My sound system was my real treat, however. I've always wanted an "audiophile" grade sound system, and now--while it's "entry level" quality--I finally have one. Even better, I have awesome neighbors that do not mind me turning it up.

I was about to also finally purchase a Garmin GPS. In the past, I've always planned out my travel and scribbled Google Maps results on index cards. It works, but has proven a frustrating method when I'm travelling in unknown territory with lots of interchanges to watch for. I had mentioned this to my dad this weekend after a particularly frustrating trip through Philly, and he confided that he and my mom were planning to get me one for my birthday this week. Nice!

I recently won an auction on Ebay for fragments of elemental germanium (element #32) for just $5! This stuff can be really really expensive, and scoring these fragments at such a price was quite a deal!

"Why would I want it?" you must be thinking! Germanium, though it looks like a metal, is really a metalloid and somewhat brittle. It has a very interesting property, as though it has a metallic shine to it, at some infrared wavelengths, it is fairly translucent (2-15 micrometers). This means that I can place a piece of germanium in the path of an infrared light and the light will still shine through.

"So what? Us humans can't detect infrared with our eyes!" must be going through your head at this point! Well, here's where the fun comes in! If you didn't know about this little trick, you can have some new fun with a household remote control and a cell phone, whether you have germanium lying around or not!

Most cell phone cameras (so probably yours) DOES detect infrared. If you turn on your phone camera and point a remote control (television, DVD, etc) and press a button on the remote, you will see through your camera phone the infrared LED in your remote light up! How cool is that?!

In theory, when I have my piece of germanium, I should be able to do the same thing, but when I place the piece of germanium in the path of the infrared, I should still be able to see the infrared LED lighting up!

SCIENCE!

My Husband wanted surround sound for our home, so he bought it for us a few months ago. - I actually didn't think we needed it because I thought the sound was just fine the way it was but now I can really hear the difference when we hear music or see films, it sounds so much better now.

And I can see that it's your B-Day today, so HAPPY B-DAY!

- I hope your day will be lots of fun

It's really cool

And congratulation on winning the auction.

I'm pleased to here you tried the experiment! When I first was told we could do this, I thought, "Man, why didn't I already know about this really cool ability of my cell phone!?"

Yep, it makes quite a difference. And, thank you for the birthday wishes!

I received this item a few months ago, but it still remains one of my favorite material possessions. A gift for my 21st birthday, it is a flask engraved with my pen name "FAVENRIS." It has been put to much good and indulgent use.

I have 2 Ford Mustangs. These have been my latest material enjoyment for over the last 5 years and still going.
I wanted to put up a couple of pics like some of the other responses I saw here but can't figure out how.

Upload them to a host site, like www.tinypic.com and post the link into the text-box.

Here's 2 pics (I hope this worked).

I did work.

Best part? They're both paid for and both have a shitload of mods and I have more tools (good tools: Craftsman, Husky, and best for the money stuff) than I really need and a garage to wrench on m in.

Having not bothered with much cooking in a while, I decided to go all out. It's actually one of the quicker meals I've done. The oil splatter just makes cleanup a tad more cumbersome.

Pan Seared Ahi Tuna with Cracked Peppercorns, Grated Wasabi and Lime Ponzu Sauce, accompanied by Broccoli sautéed in a Red Wine Sauce.

Bountiful glass of Gnarly Head's Authentic Red not pictured.

Superb!

He he I can imagine that

They both look nice, but I like the red one the best because I'm really into red these day, and I also just got a new red mobil phone, yes, my husbond spoil me

But I deserve it

It looks really nice, but I have to admit that I was looking even more at the table and the chairs here.

I love that style, and a round dinner table is very romantic in my eyes. We got a black one.